Once, leading a retreat for a church group in the rugged terrain of Texas hill country, I taught about listening prayer—the practice of leaving space in our talking with God for guidance or new insight.
And then I gave this assignment: For the next ten or fifteen minutes, I said, go out into the open spaces or trails outside our building, or find a quiet corner here in the retreat center, and pray this simple phrase. …
Read MoreWhen my youngest son was two years old, chronic ear infections filled his ears with fluid, dulled his hearing, and slowed his mastery of speech. Micah wanted to talk, but a lack of words constantly frustrated his attempts. This made his part in our family’s nightly bedside prayers a trial.
Read MorePromising vaccines--amazingly effective and quickly rolled out—showed up like a long-yearned-for spring. Yet, for all the astonishing good they have done, the deaths headed off, the layer of protection they offer, they haven’t returned life to normal.
Read MoreOf course prayer makes a difference. Or does it? I ask the question because of something I remember hearing in the church I grew up attending: “Prayer doesn’t change things; it changes us.” Is it true that prayer doesn’t—cannot—change “things”?
Read MoreI think our world would be better off if we spent less time arguing and more time telling stories.
Read MoreWhile it may just be a four-letter word—and a single syllable at that—self carries a lot of freight. Especially when linked with other words: Self-aware, self-worth, selfless. On the negative side we speak of someone as self-centered, self-destructive, selfish.
Read MoreIt’s an odd word, but I instantly understood why someone coined it: Doomscrolling is a new term for our tendency (temptation?) to scroll through bad news on our digital devices, even though that news is disheartening and often depressing.
Read MoreMost people are intimidated by how complicated the talk of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit seems. But I’m more struck by how the conviction can be a stomach punch to spiritual ease and shallowness.
Read MoreI’ve come to recognize lately how drawn I am to ideas that soar, to beliefs that somehow make the heart feel larger. I’ve dedicated a fair amount of time lately, after all, to writing about the Trinity, or flights of prayer, or reaching out to an immense God.
Read MoreFor some time I’ve been pondering the Trinity. Nothing like a huge topic! And it’s a belief some find it hard to muster much enthusiasm for. Isn’t the doctrine all about some archaic and esoteric meanderings of idle minds?
Read MoreMight remembering prayerfully, calling the past to mind in the presence of a loving and healing divine presence make us more whole, more fully ourselves?
Read MoreWhen I was a child, an unlikely story captured my imagination. I loved reading about a man marooned on an island, a young reader’s edition of Robinson Crusoe. I say unlikely because the story is not only centuries removed (the original was published in 1719), the novel describes a world foreign to a child growing up in suburban Southern California.
Read MoreI first learned of the ancient Christian sage Augustine through one of his striking prayers. If an utterance to God can achieve celebrity status, his would qualify. And it did not take me long as a young person to encounter it: “Our hearts, O God, are restless till they find their rest in you.”
Read MoreI must have been ten or eleven. Certainly young enough still to be learning to write legible longhand. All four of us were in the family car, heading to a budget department store or maybe (less likely) a restaurant. Looking back now, I’d guess my attention was elsewhere, thinking about homework or a girl in my class I liked, but my ears pricked when my brother, seven years my elder, said something he had just heard about a person’s handwriting.
Read MoreWe do not like to stand speechless or stammering before God, but that does not mean God holds it against us when we do.
Read MoreI knew better than to assume, as someone once put it, that the Psalms are mostly mild “benign poems about sheep,” but more like, as Eugene Peterson wrote, “earthy and rough,” just right for sorting through life’s sometimes gritty, seemingly graceless moments. Still, I found myself turning elsewhere for inspiration.
But one morning I was troubled.
Read MoreI see, captured in a flash of a moment in a department store or photographer’s studio how I sent out little signals, bids for connection, theorists call them, testing the nature of the world in which I would find myself, a world both precious and perilous. Would my little sphere prove safe? Every child wonders, as I did. As much as I have lived since, I still wonder about the nature of this world—especially when things happen that seem random or heart-rending.
Read MoreLots of us are pretty ingenious at thinking up things to worry about.
There’s even a site called phobialist.com, where Fredd Culbertson has funneled his lifelong fascination with exaggerated, exotic fears.
Read MoreI’ve lived long enough to be grateful to God for not answering all my prayers. Jobs I’ve applied for. Regions of the country where I thought I wanted to live. All grist for my asking, yet requests denied.
Read MoreA woman told a story about a time she had emergency surgery: “My sister, a professor with final exams to give, was getting married in less than a week. Yet she drove from New York City to Massachusetts in a snowstorm to see me in the hospital. No phone call would assure her that I was alive, and okay. She had to see me with her own eyes.”
Read More
